Sam Mele's career story could be boiled down to one saying: "Don't mess with a good thing."
In his youth, he played with various local teams, as his high school dumped baseball after his freshman year. He went to NYU and was a great hitter there. Hitting .405 in 1941 and .369 in 1942.
As was the standard of the day: World War II called, and Mele signed up for the Marines. He was sent to the Pacific theater in 1943 as part of the V-12 Navy College Program. This program's goal was to produce officers. While in the program, he played baseball for the Navy alongside Joe DiMaggio. Mele led the Navy league with a .358 batting average.
When he came back, he had a contract with the Boston Red Sox waiting for him. He didn't take long in making it to the major leagues. In 1947 as a rookie, Mele hit an impressive .302 with 12 home runs. Then in 1948, the Red Sox changed managers and Mele's fate changed as well. Joe McCarthy was a great manager, winning 7 World Series' in the 9 times he led teams there.
During spring training, McCarthy was watching Mele taking batting practice when he criticized Mele's stance. Mele had a very wide stance, much like Joe DiMaggio's. McCarthy wanted Mele to take a much narrower stance and taking a longer stride. As a young player, when a great like McCarthy speaks, you listen. In Mele's case, this change in his stance dramatically affected the rest of his career. He never again his for the same average, although his home run numbers did finally return years later.
Sam bounced around 6 different organizations in his 10-year career. Mele did have a couple slightly above average seasons with the Washington Senators and the Chicago White Sox. He ended up as a .267 hitter with 80 career home runs and 544 RBI's.
After spending a couple more seasons struggling in the minor leagues, Mele retired from baseball and became a scout, and the next year a coach, for the Washington Senators. After the Senators moved to Minnesota and became the Twins, Mele was the 2nd manager for the team when their original manager (and greatest name ever) Cookie Lavagetto took a leave of absence. He only won 2 of the 7 games he was the manager of before Lavagetto came back. Two week later, Lavagetto was fired and Mele became the full-time manager.
As manager for the Twins, he took them to four winning season out of the next five, and took the Twins to the American League Championship in 1965. Unfortunately, the Twins lost the World Series to the Dodgers. In 1968, after going 25-25 in the first 50 games of the season, Mele was fired.
Mele then went on to become a scout for the Boston Red Sox. He held that position for 25 years until the General Manager of the Red Sox accused him of giving the Cleveland Indians information on how to pitch to Boston hitters.
Mele passed away on May 1, 2017 at his home in Quincy, Massachusttes at the age of 95. He is buried at Mount Wollaston Cemetery in Quincy.
There are a couple of weird things about this card. For one, whoever owned it wrote the number 53 on his jersey. Mele never wore than number for any of his teams. Then we turn the card over to see how a kid might denote a player has been traded.
Whoever CL was made doubly sure to note that after just 14 games, Mele's contract was bought out by the Cincinnati Redlegs. He finished the season there before spending a season in Cleveland.
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